Request

1. Each case up to 31/07/2023 where it has recovered overpayment from a pharmacy after post-payment verification of the pharmacy’s claims for providing the Medicines Delivery Service in 2020. The information should include: o The name of the pharmacy or company o The amount initially claimed by the pharmacy o The amount recovered by NHS BSA o Whether the pharmacy appealed the decision, and if so the outcome of the appeal.

2. Each case up to 31/07/2023 where it has not paid in full the costs claimed by a pharmacy to cover additional expenses incurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic between March 1st 2020 and March 31st 2021. The information should include: o The name of the pharmacy or company o The amount initially claimed by the pharmacy o The amount ultimately paid by NHS BSA after verification exercises were carried out o Whether the pharmacy appealed the decision, and if so the outcome of the appeal.

You clarified your request as follows:

Please can I have data for A) – the entire duration of the service.

Response

Having considered the public interest test in relation to Section 43(2) of the FOIA, the NHSBSA has determined that the public interest in disclosure outweighs arguments for withholding the information. Therefore, please find the requested information attached.

Medicines Delivery Service (MDS)

• The spreadsheet shows MDS recoveries made after post payment verification (PPV) covering April 2020 – March 2021 – this covers the whole time period when the service was available for clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) patients.

• Each pharmacy branch ("contractor") only appears in the list once. However, the recovery value may relate to one or more sample periods covering April 2020 to March 2021. Some contractors receive combined recoveries for more than one sample period. Other contractors may have had a recovery for one sample period, but their case is on-going for another, which could result in further deductions being made.Column B shows the total monetary value of MDS claims paid to the contractor between April 2020 - March 2021.

• Column C shows the monetary value recovered from each contractor as of the May 2023 schedule of payments as this was the latest available data as of 31 July 2023 – some contractors are on payment plans so this will only show the instalments deducted to date.

• Column E shows a ‘Yes’ for those contractors who have appealed a recovery decision. Where the appeal outcome is ‘Awaiting Outcome’, the monetary value of the appealed recovery is not included in column E. A contractor may have agreed to a recovery for one period, but appealed a recovery decision for another. Where the appeal outcome begins ‘Appeal Dismissed’, the monetary value of the appealed recovery is included in column E and the date the appeal was dismissed is also contained in this column.

Additional expenses incurred due to the Covid-19 pandemic

• All outcomes from the appeals to NHS Resolution, where contractors chose to do so, are publicly available at PCA Decisions Archive - NHS Resolution.

• There are 46 accounts listed which show that the NHSBSA did not pay the pharmacy any amount of which was claimed. In these cases, the pharmacies had already ceased trading by the point which initial payments were made on 1 October 2021.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01346